The Canadian Sealers Association has lost one of its major figures and a courageous champion with the death of past president Mark Small, on January 18. He was 83 years old.

To show respect for Mark's contributions to the CSA, to our home province, and to sealing communities across Canada, Jim Winter, founding CSA president, Eldred Woodford, current president, and Albert Newhook, an earlier president, were present for the celebration of Mark's life at Trinity Pentecostal Church, in Baie Verte, on the remote northeast peninsula of Newfoundland.

For decades Mark was a major figure in the association's efforts to counter the propaganda of animal rights corporations and remove the politically motivated bans on Canadian seal products in many countries.

Mark cared. More importantly, he acted on his caring. What more can you ask of a person?

Caring is one thing, but taking action is a much harder thing to do. For decades Mark took action. He took action on behalf of all sealers throughout Canada. His presence made a difference. His presence at events was the presence of the people, in the midst of various Canadian government politicians and bureaucrats. In fact, often his presence was to spur those entities into taking concrete positive steps to resolve the issues that plague the Canadian sealing industry – issues that also plague rural coastal communities like his beloved Baie Verte.

Mark saw the sealing industry not only as a 400-year-old tradition throughout coastal communities in Atlantic Canada, but also as an important contributor today to the continued existence of those rural communities dependent on the mosaic of incomes that provide a living for their citizens. Sealing, fishing, hunting, farming, being a "jack of all trades" – all pieces in the financial mosaic that rural coastal communities depend on for survival. Mark spoke our facts, our realities, in Canada and to foreign politicians and media. He did so clearly, passionately, and concisely.

Mark was a man of great caring, and that caring was rooted in his faith as a pastor in the Pentecostal church. His faith infused everything he did. It made him the man he was.

He was not only an activist for the sealing industry, he was equally active in the fishery and in his community.

Despite the challenges of all those activities, his prime focus was always on his wife, Patricia, and their three sons. As time passed he became a loving grandfather, uncle, and great uncle.

Mark, as you set sail on this new voyage may you have fair winds, full holds and bloody decks. R.I.P.

On Nov. 23-24, all the right people – leaders from the European Union and Canada – were gathered in St. John’s for the Canada-EU Summit. Those of us representing Canadians who make their livings in remote and rural areas from Prince Rupert to Newfoundland’s outports, by harvesting fur and seals, were hopeful. Meetings such as these provide high-level government representatives with an opportunity to discuss issues that matter to their respective governments behind closed doors and far removed from everyday citizens.

And, this summit was different. Instead of being monitored only by political gadflies and lobbyists, people in remote communities across Eastern and Northern Canada watched closely. They watched because the summit was held in Newfoundland, where the ocean and its bounties have long been the bedrock of the economy and culture.

This, of course, is the same St. John’s that once was home port to steamers, which brought hundreds of Newfoundlanders to the ice of the North Atlantic to harvest seals. The same St. John’s where European celebrities descended to hold press conferences in front of TV cameras to attack the livelihoods of hunters who put their lives on the line on the ice to provide for their families. The same St. John’s where, for over 30 years, the elected officials of the provincial government sat on sealskin chairs as they debated the business of the day.

In 2009, the predecessors of those same EU officials who were fêted in St. John’s banned the trade of Canadian seal products, striking a blow to rural communities across Eastern and Northern Canada that had relied on the hunting of seals for hundreds of years. Regulation No 1007/2009 inflicted untold damage not only to communities in Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec, but also to Inuit communities across Canada’s North.

The impact on Inuit communities was the genesis of a challenge to the ban in the European Court of Justice, brought by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and supported by the Fur Institute of Canada and others. This was followed by a challenge by the Government of Canada at the World Trade Organization. Though it upheld the ban, the WTO challenge forced the EU to allow an exemption for seals harvested by “Inuit and other Indigenous communities”.

This is the exemption that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said was “working well” and that a “good balance” had been found on seals. This is completely and unambiguously false. Only two bodies in Canada are recognized as being able to certify that a seal product comes from an Indigenous harvest: the Government of Nunavut and the Government of Northwest Territories. In a report from her own Commission, it shows that Nunavut has only exported two sealskins to Europe, in 2020, and the Northwest Territories exported just two sealskin coats, in 2022.

European Sealers Also Hamstrung

Perhaps even more revealingly, that same report contains four EU member states saying that the ban’s “impact has gone beyond its intended purpose”. These four states – Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Sweden – all still have their own seal hunts but are hamstrung the same way Canadian sealers are when it comes to trading their products.

In terms which would be shockingly familiar to anyone on Canada’s East Coast, these states raise concerns about the impacts of seals eating cod and salmon, about infecting fish with parasites, and impacts on commercial and recreational fisheries.

Unfortunately, EU and Canadian officials did not avail themselves of an ideal opportunity to reverse the historic injustice of the 2009 seal ban when they gathered in St. John’s.

But it’s not too late. The European Commission is launching a review of the Regulation on Trade in Seal Products in 2024. Canada can, should, and must work closely with the EU member states that are unhappy with the ban, supported by Canada’s sealing industry and Indigenous leadership, to overturn the regulation.

We also need European Commission leadership to engage honestly and candidly on the damage done by this ban and chart a course to move beyond the mistakes of the past. This conversation must be elevated to the most senior levels and involve representatives of the industry and Indigenous communities directly impacted, not the extremist animal-activist groups whose goal is to destroy the way of life of people who live close to the land – and sea – and who use renewable natural resources responsibly and sustainably..